"A French quintet that cast a modern-day jazz eye over the Middle East, mixing Arab, Turkish and Persian classical music with jazz that wanders between the mellow and brooding to the farout and the very nearly free ... The double-bass is the only "traditional" jazz instrument and it's joined by oud and Arabic percussion which add to the band's Eastern credence. It's the other two instruments that take the ensemble into rather unchartered territory. The versatile tarhu spike-fiddle sounds anywhere between a frenetic violin, a soulful cello and a haunting duduk oboe, and the group is completed by the oft-overlooked bass clarinet. This instrument is perhaps the most striking sound on the album and its timbre suits the music to a tee ... "We All Scream For Ice Cream" has a corker of a tarhu solo (don't get to say that very often) and "Igor Noir" sounds as if it could accompany a film noir spy sneaking around before infiltrating a salsa night in Damascus. Really, this is just asuperbalbum"